A short history of Franco-US discord

The current frost between France and the United States is not new. They have often disagreed over the past 45 years: France refused to allow US missiles stationed on its soil, withdrew from Nato’s command structure, and recognised communist China even though it horrified the US.

THE Iraq crisis has undoubtedly opened a rift between the United States and France that will be hard to forget, let alone bridge. But does it mark the start of a new phase in Franco-American discord? To measure the significance of recent events we need to see them in the context of the disagreements that have marred relations between the countries since the late 1950s.

In 1958, when General de Gaulle returned to power, he already had a firmly established worldview and a clear idea of how France should respond. He was convinced the Soviet Union no longer wanted, and perhaps was no longer able, to extend its empire into western Europe. And the USSR had to cope with the rivalry of China. As he wrote: “If you no longer make war, sooner or later you must make peace.” The balance of nuclear terror between the two great powers ruled out direct confrontation with nuclear weapons. But this also meant that the US nuclear arsenal could not be relied upon to defend Europe. De Gaulle concluded that France must regain its freedom of action by withdrawing from Nato. And it should establish new relations with the USSR and China to achieve better understanding and cooperation with eastern bloc countries. It must acquire its own nuclear deterrent.

His analysis and the policies it inspired resulted in profound disagreement with the US. This became immediately apparent, in July 1958, when De Gaulle met the then US secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. The Soviet threat to Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia was central to the US perception of the world. To counter it Dulles recommended bolstering Nato’s political and military strength and setting up a regional defence system based on medium-range missiles and US tactical nuclear weapons stationed in Europe.

De Gaulle rejected each point. He argued that Soviet policy was primarily national or nationalist. It used communism just as a pretext, “much as you use Congress”, he told Dulles. France would not (...)

* Paul-Marie de La Gorce is a journalist and author of De Gaulle, Perrin, Paris, 2000.

(1) Speech in Phnom Penh in 1965.

(2) Apart from the disputed phrase in which he supposedly referred to a “dominating, self-assured people”, De Gaulle once said that Israel “in the territories it has seized, is organising an occupation that cannot continue without oppression, repression and expulsion. Furthermore resistance to it is appearing, which it refers to as terrorism.”